British authorities said Thursday they thwarted a terrorist plot to simultaneously blow up 10 aircraft heading to the U.S. using explosives smuggled in hand luggage, averting what police described as "mass murder on an unimaginable scale."
Police arrested 24 people, saying they were confident they captured the main suspects in what U.S. officials said was a plot in its final phases that had all the earmarks of an al-Qaida operation. However, ABC News quoted unidentified U.S. officials who had been briefed on the plot as saying five suspects were still at large and being urgently hunted.
It is often said that terrorists have to succeed only once to win. We have to succeed every time in stopping them. This is true up to a point. But succeeding in a plot to kill us isn't the same as winning. The fact that sometimes terrorists will succeed in killing us doesn't mean that it is pointless to stop 99% or 90%--or even 20%--rather than just give up and let all 100% of the plots succeed. It matters a whole lot whether the enemy constantly succeeds or only occasionally succeeds as tragic as the losses are that do occur.
This truism about the enemy only needing to succeed once also fails to consider the view from the other end. It is common to say that our fleet-footed enemies operate in networks and can outwit our slow bureaucratic response. This is mostly a lot of BS as I argued in September 2001:
Intelligence and covert operations are the first line of active defense and the first echelon of attack. The aerial suicide attacks on our people and the symbols of our power took enormous amounts of time to carry out. This is one weakness of our enemy. While they may carry out small attacks using small arms or small bombs at a moment's notice, truly horrific attacks require time because they must be planned in the shadows to avoid detection. We must increase our ability to detect such preparations and make sure the information is interpreted to provide timely and specific warnings. Then, the people who need this information must actually get the warning in time to take actions.
More importantly, we must exploit the fact that these attacks take time to organize. Intelligence must track the enemy terror cells in order to strike the enemy and disrupt them by keeping them on the move and by killing or arresting their operatives. We must sow confusion and paranoia in their ranks to slow them down and get them to fight each other. Our ability to use so many weapons is one advantage of being a powerful state. We may be a large target but we are not a helpless giant. America can direct precise or massive force quickly and globally as needed. Keeping the initiative is crucial. This will compel our enemies to start their preparation from scratch again and again. Giving the enemy time to prepare only guarantees that eventually they will be ready and will strike.
We have many resources and as long as we are hunting, killing, and arresting the enemy and not letting them plan in peace in a sanctuary, they must operate slowly and carefully to avoid detection. This gives us time to catch them before they strike. And when we find them, our vast resources can swoop on them quickly if need be or take defensive actions to defeat or deflect the attack if discovered.
In this case the British arrested some of the suspects, the good guys are looking for five others, we've heightened security at our airports, and we are surely doing other things that we won't know about--until the New York Times prints them next week, of course.
So do remember, the threat is real. And it is true that the enemy has to succeed only once to kill lots of us.
But remember, too, that the enemy's plots to kill us must go through a number of stages as they plan, recruit, fund, train, scout, and actually attack. If we find out about the attack at any stage in the perhaps months or years it takes to execute a big attack, we can strike back and react.
The enemy has to hide their plans every step of the way. We have to find them only once during this laborious and lengthy process before they strike to win.
This time, we've at least blunted the attack. It is too soon to tell if we stopped it.
Another question is whether this is the attack attempt that Osama bin Laden appeared to be hinting at and justifying earlier in the year.
